Futura font

1 Feb

About this font.

Paul Renner designed Futura, a geometric sans-serif typeface that was released in 1927. It was created as a contribution to the New Frankfurt project. It can be based mostly on geometric designs, particularly the circle, and is conceptually similar to the Bauhaus style of the historical period. Because of the Bauer Sort Foundry, it was created as a font in rivalry with Ludwig & Mayer's famous Erbar design from 1926.

Futura appears to be efficient and forward-thinking. Renner was not affiliated with the Bauhaus, but he shared many of its idioms and thought that a modern typeface should convey new models rather than be a reincarnation of a past pattern.

Renner's design eschewed the approach of most previous sans-serif designs (now commonly referred to as grotesques), which were primarily based on sign-painting, condensed lettering, and nineteenth-century serif typefaces, in favour of simple geometric forms: near-perfect circles, triangles, and squares.

It is made up of strokes of almost equal weight and low contrast. The lowercase features tall ascenders that rise beyond the cap line, and the ‘a’ and ‘g’ is written in nearly-circular, single-story shapes, with the former being more prevalent in handwriting than in printed text.

The proportions of the uppercase characters are close to those of traditional Roman capitals. The original metal design exhibited great adaption from the style to specific sizes, and numerous firms have developed a variety of digitisations.